1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of creating animation image data files for displaying an animated image of a given device made up of a plurality of components.
2. Description of the Related Art
Catalogs and instruction manuals describing products (given devices) in detail are used by sellers to explain the features of a product and by users to understand how to use or maintain the product. These catalogs and manuals are most commonly printed on paper, and usually include illustrations or static views of the product and components along with accompanying descriptive text. The drawings used in these catalogs and manuals have an inherent drawback in that the actual motion of a product is difficult for users to imagine, and, consequently, operating and maintenance methods are often difficult to understand.
Many types of animation image data files are now available and, as the computer application scope expands, catalogs including animation image data files are more commonly being made available for access through web sites. Animation images help users to more easily understand the operation of a given device.
Conventional animation image data files are normally created using animation software. With such animation software, generating complex shapes remains difficult and time-consuming work, particularly for a given device made by combining many components. In order for viewers to visualize its assembly and disassembly processes, the shapes of the components must be highly accurate. Creating a data file for this purpose requires a lot of labor.
Moreover, when a component data file is created with animation software, dividing a component into a plurality of blocks and generating data for each is a common method of dealing with a single component whose shape is complex and difficult to render. Because each block has its shading, this technique leads to a problem that perspective views generated by combining discrete data generated for the blocks of the component are not clear.
Manufacturing drawings and computer-aided design (CAD) data for the given device are required for the software to generate models of the components of any device. Programs are known that generate three-dimensional CAD data from two-dimensional CAD data. Thus, three-dimensional CAD data can be generated from the original data for the components to make the components visible on a display.
However, because three-dimensional CAD data generated by these tools is basically for displaying static images, difficulties have been encountered when attempts have been made to display animation images from such data. Particularly, to display animated images of disassembling a given device comprising a plurality of components into the components and their maintenance status, a new rendering solution is required. Developing such programming is another problem with the related art.
Still another problem has been encountered that the animation data created by using the unprocessed three-dimensional CAD data has an enormous data volume, and therefore can be handled only by large-scale computers.